Our engineering team had one objective this summer: drive speed, create a more intuitive design experience, and reduce clicks while building on our position as the most accurate design software on the market.
Here’s the thing about accuracy: it means something different at every stage of the value chain. We believe that AI designs are great for estimating a project, aerial imagery works for sales, and drone-based precision is critical for engineering, permitting, and install day. What makes Scanifly unique is that all of these happen in one environment, centralizing your sales and operations workflows while keeping our costs 30-70% lower than other design tools like Aurora.
Our happy place? Best-in-class design tools at a fair price that help consolidate your software stack.
What We Shipped This Month
⚡ Infrastructure Overhaul
What It Is: We’ve completely updated the backend code that drives core design functionality. Not glamorous, but it creates significant performance unlocks.
Why It Matters: Faster modeling and easier loading on older computers. This was essential groundwork for data-rich designs like solar shingles and commercial ground mounts with complex shading scenarios.
What’s Coming: Better performance on poor internet connections, enhanced 3D mesh layers for roof clarity, responsive tree modeling, and smoother camera navigation in 3D scenes.
🏗️ Roof Layouts in Less Clicks with 3D Scene Keepout Editing
What It Is: Adjust obstruction heights directly in the 3D scene using hotkeys, model multiple obstructions simultaneously, and see height references in real-time.
The Old Way: 3-4 clicks minimum—go to left pane, find obstruction, scroll, adjust. Repeat for each obstruction.
The New Way: Immediate adjustment in the 3D design space where people actually want to work.
What’s Coming: Expanded 3D editing capabilities, automatic obstruction labeling (potentially flowing to plan sets), and automatic obstruction detection for remote designs.
🤝 EnergySage Partnership: A better solar shopping experience
What It Is: Scanifly and EnergySage have partnered to develop AI-based design outputs that enhance engagement and accuracy in EnergySage’s lead marketplace, providing homeowners with improved visual experiences when shopping for solar.
Why This Matters: We’ve been AI-first for years—automatic obstruction detection, photogrammetry-based tree modeling, computer vision—we just don’t brag about it. This partnership leverages our massive solar drone dataset and in-house expertise from former install designers.
What’s Coming: More robust AI functionality native to the Scanifly platform, plus additional installer-level benefits within the combined EnergySage + Scanifly ecosystem.
đź”— Pipe Solar Partnership: Leading PV design tools embedded in your sales & CRM software
What it is: Scanifly and Pipe partnered to embed Scanifly’s design tools directly into Pipe’s sales workflow, unifying CRM, proposals, and design in one platform. Contractors can leverage three flexible design options: professional team, AI-generated, and self-serve.
Why we built it: Addressing core pain points for contractors and sales teams—jumping between platforms, duplicate data entry, being bogged down by clunky workflows, and overpaying for sales software.
What’s coming: Additional embed solutions as a part of Scanifly’s broader strategy to provide contractor flexibility through integrations, helping businesses migrate from expensive legacy tools.
5. đź’° Nearmap Pricing Reduction
What it is: Last week, we lowered our Nearmap pricing by up to 88%—what used to cost 16 credits now costs just 2 credits for up to 2-acre coverage. Users can also preview available imagery before purchasing.
Why we built it: With PrelimDesign adoption growing, our volume with Nearmap increased dramatically, and we wanted to pass those savings along to our customers. Not using PrelimDesign yet? Request a demo to see it in action!Â
What’s coming: Integrating Nearmap into our AI-powered design workflows. As adoption continues growing, you can expect even better pricing ahead!
What’s Coming Soon?
🎨 Redesigned User Interface
What is it: Our engineers are fine tuning laggy roof corner snapping in PrelimDesign for more responsive and intuitive sketching, quicker orthorectification of roof planes, and more precise 90-degree angles.
Why we’re building it:Â Addresses the core frustration of slow, buggy snapping that impacts design speed, accuracy, and adoption.Â
What’s coming:Â Whole roof sketching! The ability to edit multiple roof planes simultaneously. Users can edit tilts, heights, and align multiple roof planes in one action, making PrelimDesign easier to use while speeding up design time.Â
✏️ Responsive Roof Sketching
What is it: Our engineers are fine-tuning laggy roof corner snapping in PrelimDesign for more responsive and intuitive sketching, quicker orthorectification of roof planes, and more precise 90-degree angles.Â
Why we’re building it:Â Addresses the core frustration of slow, buggy snapping that impacts design speed, accuracy, and adoption.Â
What’s coming:Â Whole roof sketching! The ability to edit multiple roof planes simultaneously. Users can edit tilts, heights, and align multiple roof planes in one action, making PrelimDesign easier to use while speeding up design time.Â
Looking Ahead
We’re in one of the busiest and most complex periods in solar’s history—aggressive ITC expiration, changing net metering rules and local incentives, and an increase in home electrification products being sold, which raises the technical demands on reps. Our job is to drive speed and efficiency to help you scale, without compromising accuracy.
The industry’s future is uncertain. TPO-heavy companies will likely scale up (although I’m concerned about TPO capital undersupply), while cash- and loan-focused shops may face headwinds. Our tools and pricing models are designed to support both scaling up to close the year strong and scaling down if needed.
Our north star: Generate precise PV designs in a couple of clicks while remaining the most accurate platform available for any dataset provided. We’re meeting contractors where they need to be with the right features, functionality, and fair pricing.
Request a demo to see all of our newest features in action!
